March 30 Day 19 of Journey

A lazy morning followed by what was supposedly a final trip to the orphanage. The weather was beautiful today. All the ice has melted off the waters and we no longer see snow. For the first time since our arrival we saw jets flying in the air. We were wondering if we were in restricted airspace as we never had seen jets before. Perhaps that is because we really are in the middle of nowhere and there is no reason to be flying over.

We enjoyed our visit with the children today. They seem excited to proceed to the next step. Yuri has been speaking with one of his older sisters several times since we first arrived. He said that his sister is excited for the opportunity that these kids are going to have. It appears that Sam and Gabe have decided that it is going to be OK to have some extra siblings around.

It turns out that we will have to make one more trip to the orphanage as the children don’t have a ride to the court because the orphanage car is being used for something else. The orphanage director is in Dnepropotrosk so we have to get a driver to bring her down. Seems like we are taking everybody to the court except the judge. As long as we get the people who need to be there we will do whatever it takes. If you are reading this on Thursday, after 7:00am MST, our court should be over, and hopefully, we will have received a favorable determination. We will be catching the night train from Zaparozhye so it may be an extra day before we post again.

Note from Anne:

I asked Tony to please take some pictures of the roads. Since much of our experience here in Ukraine has been driving for hours a day on the roads, we must have pictures to remind us what they look like so we can remember what they feel like. Before we left to come here, I told Sam and Gabe that we would be spending quite a bit of time driving to and from the orphanage along with many trips to take care of paper work in the main city in the area, our drive would take longer than driving to Provo and back. Gabe does not like driving far at all, and Provo is too far (1 hour). He said, “I’m not going to Ukraine!” Well, you can see that he is here with us, but after driving on these roads, I can’t imagine that he will complain very much about driving to Provo. The roads have soooo many potholes and ruts. Some sections are worse than others, but none of the roads are great.

Some of the "smaller" potholes

We left the rockets and the launcher at the orphanage yesterday along with two sets of stacking cups. I am not sure how much time I will be spending at the orphanage when I return and figured those are two things we would give them now. Lucy is going to keep the stuff that I brought for the friendship bracelets and the fingernail polishing stuff. I will leave them for the girls after my next trip. A note to any families that will be traveling here to adopt. A few of the other families that are here, gave their craft supplies and some of their games to the orphanage director when the families first arrived. Unfortunately, they never saw the stuff again. Tony and I have purposefully kept ownership of our games and other supplies. We take them each day when we go to the orphanage and leave with them each day. It has worked out great. One of the workers at the orphanage told Lucy that the girls would love to have the embroidery floss that we use for the bracelets so they could have it for their cross stitch work. Lucy told her that we would leave it all for the girls when we are all finished.

We met the Gollings for dinner. Lucy walked with them to the train station after dinner to help Andy get a train ticket for Thursay night with us. Tony, Sam, Gabe, and I all walked home from the pizza place. We spent a bit of time repacking the bags, finishing the movie Return of the King, and then reading scriptures and Endless Steppe.